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HCL Sametime vs Office 365 comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

HCL Sametime
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Virtual Meetings (14th)
Office 365
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
152
Ranking in other categories
Content Collaboration Platforms (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Messaging and Collaboration solutions, they serve different purposes. HCL Sametime is designed for Virtual Meetings and holds a mindshare of 1.6%, up 0.4% compared to last year.
Office 365, on the other hand, focuses on Content Collaboration Platforms, holds 8.5% mindshare, up 6.8% since last year.
Virtual Meetings Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
HCL Sametime1.6%
Zoom Workplace Business7.4%
Webex5.2%
Other85.8%
Virtual Meetings
Content Collaboration Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Office 3658.5%
Google Workspace7.9%
Dropbox Business - Enterprise7.7%
Other75.9%
Content Collaboration Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

Bogdan Chechlowski - PeerSpot reviewer
Kierownik Biura Informatyki at EIB SA
Stable product, communicate very fast and allows to see who's online in the office or work environment
It was used for communication through text messages, primarily Being able to see who was online and communicate very fast was a good feature.  The security was quite good. However, when we tried to implement it for email at a high level, we had to use another solution, FortiMail Gateway. I view…
BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Collaboration has transformed how our teams work and Copilot now drives faster daily decisions
The interface for the security and compliance center could be simplified. It changes frequently, which can make it somewhat difficult for admins to stay up-to-date on where specific settings are located. The compliance center modification or improvement of Office 365 needs to be introduced. The rest of the features feel acceptable to me. The reason it is not a ten is because of the complexity of managing the vast array of admin settings, which requires a specialized IT team. Even though it meets industry standards for decent security compliance such as SOC and HIPAA, the complexity of managing the admin settings needs to improve.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Audio and video calls provide faster communication than chat."
"This solution saves time and cost in communicating with team members, streamlines tasks in my organization by encouraging us to chat directly with the relevant person, and strengthens professional relationships through increased communication among peers."
"I can view the status and availability of colleagues or team members, which makes it easy to approach them when they are available."
"A very good communication and real-time collaboration software, it is simple, fast, reliable, keeps history and the best feature of all is its intelligence."
"The security was quite good."
"Office 365 is popular and easy to use due to its intuitive interface, and the collaboration with OneDrive allows us to access anything, anywhere, in the same format across devices, including mobile phones."
"Office 365 plus the 64-bit 2016 versions of the Office desktop applications is a great combination that I could not function without."
"Quarantine email alerts to users to allow the email to their inbox (tricky but handy) - tricky if one doesn't have third-party email security, handy if one has got good third party email security)."
"The recent Microsoft 365 integration with Copilot is certainly very useful and effective, specifically for enterprise customers as it provides more than a 5x boost to productivity."
"I think there's more advantage in using Office 365 compared to Google or AWS collaboration tools if you are using Microsoft in your productivity tools, due to the seamless integration."
"Reliable without any glitches."
"One of its strengths is the integration with SharePoint and other applications like Teams, which allows for seamless communication and file sharing."
"Office 365 is very easy to use and it's fast, with functionalities that allow for seamless simulations, and the collaboration features, especially when working with technology sectors, are highly useful."
 

Cons

"The interface is too colorful and looks like Windows XP."
"The webinar should be integrated into Sametime for a larger number of participants."
"It lacks some features compared to modern solutions. For example, it doesn't allow sending screenshots or other files."
"Sametime hangs sometimes and therefore needs to get restarted."
"It seems that the software might in the future, support the software telephony exchange but at the current time, it is not doing that and because of that one key feature of real-time communication is missing from it."
"The scalability is okay. However, we have such a large organization, and because IT has to enact it, it takes a while to do each one by one."
"There are several additional features we would like to see, such as advanced features of SAN protection in Office 365. The main thing is the SAN protection; we would like to see a lot of advanced features added because we had a lot of spam attacks."
"Security is still complex, but the admin console improving."
"The feature to convert PDF file to a Word document needs improvement as well as the feature to save the file automatically when typing, without using the save command."
"Since we are using a cloud base, for stability, I can rate it 8, because there are some performance issues and outages I've encountered."
"There should be RAM optimization related to Teams and desktop applications since they are very RAM hungry."
"There is something called Office Script in Excel, which is not very user-friendly."
"To be very honest, we use Cute FTP to transfer most files, and if they had FTP portals which they could guarantee were secure, that would be a great help."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Most of the time, we purchase Microsoft Exchange licenses, which are less expensive and provide only an email platform and 50 gigabytes of email storage for free."
"The pricing is high and has actually caused us to limit the number of licenses we purchase due to budgeting."
"The pricing is not really high, but one can get the software with the license key for free."
"I think that we pay $9.99 USD per user, monthly."
"For the moment, we are paying on a monthly basis because we are still adapting the support and how we want to proceed. I think we will move to paying for the annual license."
"I would rate the solution 3 out of 5 for the price. I think Microsoft presents a good solution concerning the price."
"Good reporting and good value subscriptions for international calls."
"​The pricing/licensing is easy to manage."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Construction Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business62
Midsize Enterprise31
Large Enterprise70
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with HCL Sametime?
I view it as part of HCL Notes and Domino, and my opinion is similar to those products. It lacks some features compared to modern solutions. For example, it doesn't allow sending screenshots or oth...
What is your primary use case for HCL Sametime?
It was used for communication through text messages, primarily.
What advice do you have for others considering HCL Sametime?
Overall, it was quite good. I would rate it an eight out of ten. It's a better product than some others from HCL, but overall, I wouldn't recommend it, given the availability of superior alternatives.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Office 365?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Office 365 is that it is moderate.
What needs improvement with Office 365?
Office 365 could be improved or enhanced in some ways. It would be better if it were more simple to find the points, or sometimes there are so many possible configurations that it makes you confuse...
What is your primary use case for Office 365?
Teams and Outlook are important for us, and Teams is central to our operations. I utilize Power Automate for streamlining repetitive tasks in our organization, but not for large tasks. For tasks su...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Lotus Sametime, IBM Lotus Sametime
Microsoft Office 365, Office 365 Enterprise, Office 365 Enterprise E1, Office 365 Enterprise E3, Office 365 Enterprise E5, Office 365 ProPlus, Office 365 Business, Office 365 Business Essentials, Office 365 Business Premium, Office 365 F1
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Connect2Cloud, Superior Group, Daifuku Co. Ltd., Seaward, The City of Fort Worth, Christian Brothers Services, Berlitz, Deutsche Notes User Group, Danske Fysioterapeuter, Slumberland, La Vacanza, Rheinmetall AG
Me & the Bees Lemonade
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900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.